


6 kisses since 1945

by poetrix



Category: Marvel
Genre: Depression, EVERYTHINGS GOOD YALL, F/M, M/M, but not, cursed ship, it’s rlly only a little stony, nearly noncon, stucky is endgame sorry kids, these bois are so in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16947315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetrix/pseuds/poetrix
Summary: “Was that your first kiss since 1945?” Natasha said with a smirk. Steve felt the heat growing in his cheeks and looked down at the steering wheel in front of him.“That bad huh?”A short argument ensued, ending with a short remark from Steve:“That was not my first kiss since 1945.”Steve hadn’t stopped thinking about the conversation since he’d had it. He had been truthful, it wasn’t his first kiss since 1945. It wasn’t even the first. Or second. Or third or fourth. And ever since his Fifth Kiss Since 1945, he hadn’t been able to take his mind off the four that came before.





	6 kisses since 1945

**Author's Note:**

> listen BITCHES
> 
> i’ve been working on this fic for like,, a good three months
> 
> it’s not even long (or good), i’m just an inconsistent writer
> 
> oh well
> 
> uhh enjoy some stucky angsty fluff and some stony half-smut
> 
> if i have any grammatical/spelling errors pls pls pls comment. i really try my most but ya girl doesn’t have the patience to proofread eight times

“Alright I have a question for you. Which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don’t answer it though, you’re kind of answering it, you know?” Steve remembered Natasha sitting back in the passenger seat of her and Steve’s “getaway car”, if a blue four-door chevy pickup could be called such.

 

“What?” 

 

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?” Natasha said with a smirk. Steve felt the heat growing in his cheeks and looked down at the steering wheel in front of him.

 

“That bad huh?”

 

A short argument ensued, ending with a short remark from Steve:

 

“That was not my first kiss since 1945.”

 

Steve hadn’t stopped thinking about the conversation since he’d had it. He had been truthful, it wasn’t his first kiss since 1945. It wasn’t even the first. Or second. Or third or fourth. And ever since his Fifth Kiss Since 1945, he hadn’t been able to take his mind off the four that came before.

 

The first was little more than a month after Steve was out of the ice. He was physically adjusted maybe, but, to him, the war had been in full swing only thirty days ago. He mourned all his closest comrades at once. The Commandos. Peggy. Bucky. Anyone who’d ever done anything kind to him, dead. 

 

Steve, in a way, was dead himself. He couldn’t think straight. Everything was too loud, too bright, too fast. He couldn’t feel. He didn’t have time to. All he had time to see was inside his head, and all that was in his head was the war.

 

He watched Bucky die a hundred times. His bed sheet scratched at his back and it felt like his “choir-boy” Captain America costume. It felt like Bucky dying. It felt like Steve not dying. He slept on the hardwood floor.

 

Empty whiskey bottles sat on Steve’s counter in a desperate attempt to forget, to scrub clean, to wipe the inside of his mind until it shined. He didn’t get drunk, nay, he  _ couldn’t  _ get drunk. When he finally saved up enough energy to move, he spent hours in the shower. If he stayed in long enough, the water would numb him. It was almost like his sleep,  _ almost  _ relief. 

 

Eventually, if acted upon by a big enough desire to self-destruct, the exhaustion could be overcome. Tonight was one of those nights.

 

Steve wandered out of his tiny Brooklyn apartment, it had probably been the first time that week, but Steve wouldn’t’ve known. The weeks run together. He followed vague concepts of light and noise to a club. Maybe surrounding himself with intoxicated people would intoxicate him.

 

He stepped inside the building, and the purple strobe lights pierced his head, which hadn’t stopped throbbing for weeks anyway. People passed by in his periphery, blurring into a mass. Steve knew he’d made a mistake coming here. Going anywhere was a mistake for him now. He considered heading back but that was an unimaginable amount of work for him now. He was tired, and there were chairs in this room anyway. 

 

He sat down and watched people’s feet swish and tap across the dance floor. His head was down, and his eyelids nearly fluttered shut for the first time in three days. That is, until an icy finger met his chin and pulled it up to meet a pair of eyes. He couldn’t tell whether it was the lights, but the eyes the man above him looked down with were the brightest thing in that building. His dark hair fell in stark contrast to his pale skin, and Steve was utterly ambivalent. 

 

The man sat down on the arm of Steve’s chair and kissed him, kissed him hard. Steve could feel it in his skull, and it hurt. It felt like the war: sudden and painful and unwanted.

 

The man ran his hands through Steve’s unkempt hair, bit his lip, slid his hands up his shirt. Steve barely moved. If he waited, maybe he’d end up leaving. And that’s just what he tried to do. With Steve. The man eased back from Steve’s face and took his hand. He tugged on Steve’s arm in an implicit “let’s head  _ upstairs _ ” gesture. Steve didn’t move. It’s not that he did or didn’t want to either way. He just didn’t care. And he was tired. And sex was a lot of work. The man gave him a half-angry, half-apologetic look and walked off, dropping Steve’s hand back to his side.

 

Finally, at around 5 am, Steve got swept out with the rest of the trash.

 

~

 

The Second Kiss Since 1945 came just a couple of days after the now-infamous Battle of New York.

 

He and the newly formed squadron who had fought in it were lying around Stark Tower’s residential suites. They had been there all day, nursing wounds and resting, and day turned to night, and oh, wow, Stark had drunk a lot since he’d started early this afternoon.

 

The rest of the group had turned in for bed, and only Steve and Tony remained in the living room. Steve stood up in anticipation of Tony doing the same and them both heading to their respective beds, but he remained on the couch, a whiskey in one hand. 

 

Steve closed the few steps between them and begun to grab Tony to help his inebriated ass to bed. Tony, ever the contrarian, was non compliant.

 

“Tony, let’s go. It’s late, and you don’t really wanna stay here on the couch,” Steve said.

 

“Do if you’ll stay here wit’me,” Tony slurred.

 

“C’mon, up,” Steve ignored Tony’s comment and took his hand to help him up. Tony accepted the hand and promptly used it to pull Steve down on top of him.

 

“Mm. Stay.”

 

“Tony--” Steve’s objection was ended by Tony’s alcohol-coated lips messily pressing to his. Steve was straddled over his lap and his mind raced. 

 

_ I shouldn't be doing this. This is wrong. He’s  _ drunk,  _ dammit. _

 

He knew it wasn’t fair to Tony, he knew he was taking advantage of his drunkenness, but damn if he wasn’t pretty in the city light flowing through the window, and damn if his hands didn’t feel real nice resting on Steve’s hip bones. 

 

Steve reciprocated Tony’s advances, brushing his tongue along Tony’s teeth, hands tangled in the hair on the back of his head. Tony bit his bottom lip and Steve tightened his grip. God, he hadn’t been touched,  _ really  _ touched  like this by someone he knew since, well, 1945. And he missed it, oh, how he missed it. In that moment, Tony’s warm hands up his shirt were the best thing he’d ever felt. 

Steve needed a body, and here was a body more than willing. He briefly imagined taking Tony up to his room, watching him squirm, hearing him groan into his lips. He could almost see Tony the morning after, hair pushed back, skin smooth in the morning sun. He put a soundtrack over it in his head, soft Edith Piaf playing underneath the swish of eight-thousand thread count sheets and the sound of Tony breathing. 

 

He couldn’t do it though. He could think about it, and he could wish for it, but that’s a decision that was unfair to make for someone drunk. 

 

He was still kneeling over Tony’s lap, and he sat down on it carefully, given he had a good six inches on the man, and they were both still pretty banged up after the fight. Tony hummed into his mouth as a thank you, and his hips clearly appreciated it too. He twitched under Steve, and as Steve adjusted, he could feel Tony getting hard underneath him. Tony clawed at Steve’s hips, pushing him down against his lap. Tony’s kisses got messier, needier, and Steve could feel his gasping breath between moans.

 

_ God, he’s so easy,  _ Steve thought.  _ Not bad either. Wonder if he’s even better sober. _

 

Before the thought had even fully passed his mind, he had made a sound. Apparently Tony liked it, because it prompted him to move his right hand in from Steve’s hip onto his crotch and start stroking his jeans. Steve was hard, too, before he had time to think about the implications of what was happening. 

 

_ Damn. Damn, he’s hot. Damn. This is hot. _

 

“ ‘tsa sexy ass, Rogers,” Tony said, pulling his tongue back into his own mouth. He took his hands off Steve and moved them to his belt buckle. Steve put his own hand over Tony’s, stopping him.

 

“I know, I know, but we can’t. I can’t,” Steve said.

 

“Y’re no fun,” Tony said, still trying to unbuckle his belt.

 

“No, c’mon, Tone, we’re going upstairs.” Steve hoisted Tony’s arm up on his shoulder, and practically carried Tony upstairs, Tony still trying to get his belt off the whole way upstairs. By the time he was in bed, it was hanging onto his pants by one loop and his fly was undone. 

 

Steve dropped him in his bed, and started to leave.

 

“Stay,” Tony said in a half-asleep, half-kicked-puppy voice.

 

“Good night, Tony.” Steve closed the door behind him. 

 

_ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck f- _

 

Steve shed his pants the moment he stepped into his own room, his boner still going strong. The image of morning Tony stayed in his mind, a few Edith Piaf notes drifting in and out of his head. Steve imagined running his hands over every inch of his skin, knowing him better than he knew himself, and that was sufficient material for Steve to take care of himself.

 

Tired, mildly sticky, and confused, Steve took off his shirt and slid into his bed.

 

The next morning Steve woke up alone, in silence. Tony didn’t remember the previous night. Steve wished he could  _ stop _ remembering it.

 

~

 

The third kiss came two days later, when Steve, Tony, and Clint were invited to appear on one of the network morning shows. Steve couldn’t remember which one. 

 

He didn’t want to do it in the first place, but Tony insisted it would be better to have three than two, and “we could use all the sanity we can get”. Steve reluctantly agreed, and it was the morning of the show. They had just been slathered in thick coats of TV makeup, mic-ed, and sent to their entrance positions. The three of them were placed to enter through the back of the theater, and the PA’s standing next to them hand signaled:  _ three. two. one. _

 

The doors swung open revealing the show’s surprise guest, and the three men begun to stroll down the aisles in the audience, waving and smiling. Steve turned to make brief eye contact with Tony, and while he did, a young woman no older than twenty-five with a hot pink v-neck grabbed him and smacked one right on his lips. He felt the surprise register on his face, and his eye contact with Tony (who was rioting with laughter) remained. Steve’s face flushed hot and he looked down as he kept walking. The audience cheered and laughed.

 

Steve almost has this memory repressed.

 

~

 

His fourth kiss was with an old flame, so the saying goes. At this point in his... recovery? Steve was proficient in his usage of the internet, mostly scouring it to discover what had happened in the time while he was, say, out of commission. 

 

One such time, he was “googling” the names of old friends and comrades to see what had become of them. Many of the commandos had intricate histories written about them, best-selling biographies, even, in the rare case. The one he cared most about finding information on, though, seemed to have gone underground. Peggy Carter was dead to the internet.

 

“Friday, what can you find me on a Peggy Carter?” Steve said to the air in front of him, “Lived back during the war.”

 

“Peggy Carter was an MI5 Agent born in 1921 in London, England. What else do you want, Captain?”

 

“Is she still alive?”

 

“I’m not seeing a death certificate anywhere. There’s a property under ‘Margaret Carter’ in London. Would you like the address?”

 

Steve hesitated. “Yes.”

 

\--

 

Barely two days later, Steve stood on a wet grey doorstep in the heart of London, feeling smaller than he ever had before. His shaking hand reached up to the knocker and gave it three short taps. HIs stomach turned inside of him. A fear of what lay on the other side of the door encompassed him, shrouded his vision.

 

The door swung open and a young woman with wavy brown hair stood in front of him.  _ Peggy?  _ No, no, it couldn’t possibly be. He blinked. An average-looking, modernly dressed girl stood in front of him. 

 

“Hello, what can I do for you?” God, her voice sounded almost identical to Peggy’s. He could hear it in the back of his mind if he tried hard enough.  _ Don’t you dare be late, understood?  _ His eyes grew hot. He brought his eyes to meet an expectant look on the girl’s face?

 

“Yeah, yeah. Does Peggy Carter live here?”

 

“Who’s asking?” The girl pursed her lips in a disapproving look she was thirty years too young to pull off. Steve almost smiled.

 

“An old friend.”

 

The same unflattering look across her face, she opened the door just wide enough for Steve to enter, and closed the door behind him. 

 

“Wait here.”

 

Steve stood in the entryway, glancing around at the things around him. Old photographs hung on the wall, dated furnishings around the room. Not quite from his era, but slightly after. A side table held an aging photograph of a married couple, radiant. Young. Peggy was in white. She looked gorgeous, God, Steve couldn’t think of a time when she didn’t look gorgeous.

 

He was startled out of his thoughts by the tight voice of the brown-haired girl.

 

“You may go in and see Margaret now.”  _ Margaret. What a foreign word. _

 

Her voice wove thread through the air. Her smile was as bright as the day it first shone. In age, she had lost none of her vigor, none of her beauty, none of her  _ her.  _

 

“Steve. Steve, you’re  _ alive. _ ”

 

Steve let a tear sink into the thin nightdress that covered her as he embraced her. He buried his head into her neck and let his brow unfurrow and felt the sun outside through at least two floors of the apartment building.  

 

He kissed her on the cheek that day, as he slipped out past the disapproving girl, out the door. He practically skipped down the street that day, skipped in the dark. He tried to spot her little building through tears as his plane lifted off the runway of Heathrow. He was flying away from one of the only people who saw him as Steve and not as Captain America.

 

The next time he saw her, he was a pallbearer.

 

~

 

The fifth kiss was, of course, his kiss with Natasha, to scare off Rumlow’s agents looking for them.

 

~

 

It’s been two years since that short conversation. Steve has still only kissed five people since 1945. That’s been enough for him. He always was the most hopelessly romantic, and even the serum can’t wash that away. He, on occasion, thought of the kisses that have passed: the few twenty-first century ones that matter, and the ones shared under a worn wool blanket during Brooklyn’s cold Decembers. The ones that counted down the days until the next conscription day. The ones that he lost.

 

Meaning was a rare companion in these impersonal times. He read books, watched the news for the occasional heartfelt story, and listened to music, but mostly he did anything to capture the feeling of his old life. If this new life could be called much of a life at all. 

 

Once he walked a mile in the rain just because he’d lost his good sketching pencil and needed a new one. He drew as much as possible, drew everything in sight: drew the girl at the coffee shop, drew the city skyline from the L train, drew art that hangs in the Met.

 

Sometimes he sits on his couch for days on end, watching his old life play out like a movie. Like a movie that never finished and cut right into the middle of another. He tries to remember the details. What did the streets of Irishtown smell like? What color was the rug on his bedroom floor? Why did he get out of bed in the mornings?

 

He didn’t know the answers.

 

For a while.

 

It was the news. 

 

“Footage of a man leaving Vienna after the U.N. bombing earlier today shows a suspect leaving the scene of the tragedy. Facial recognition software identifies the man as one James Buchanan Barnes.”

 

Steve snapped to alertness.  _ Bucky.  _ Steve had been intermittently trying to remember every shred him, when he had the energy, and had made little progress, even with all the resources at his disposal. 

 

The best lead Steve has ever gotten was a grainy newspaper photo from political riots in Bucharest, showing a scruffy, long-haired young man in the background. It was too small and too uncertain to ever travel to Romania itself, but he knew that now was the time. People would be hunting him down, wanting justice for what had happened. Steve knew better. 

 

By three pm the next day, Steve was standing, in full battle garb, in a small one-room apartment. There was a bed stuffed in the corner, one that looked more like it belonged in a prison than in someone’s chosen home. The sheets seemed scratchy and old, as if they’d been previously discarded. The walls were grimy with years of uncleared dust and… smoke? Steve wasn’t sure. 

 

Steve stood in the sad, solemn, silence for a moment, maybe two, before he heard a key shuffled into the lock on the door of the room and it swung open. 

 

It was Bucky. He looked changed, but only superficially, as if his outer layer could be wiped off to reveal his real face. 

 

“Steve?”

 

Tears formed in Steve’s eyes that threatened to overflow onto the grubby concrete beneath him. 

 

“Damn, Buck.”

 

When stars collide, gravity is disrupted and time itself wiggles around in awe. When the two lost boys standing together in this room collided, time stopped. The wave that they produced was tangible, like you could catch it in the air. 

 

Steve pulled away, face wet with tears and happiness. He held tight to the back of Bucky’s head, as if he might disintegrate before his very eyes. He didn’t. He held firm, the first thing that had, in this new life of Steve’s. 

 

Bucky smiled and pulled Steve back in to press their lips together. Warmth imbued their bodies, wrapping them in a soft chrysalis. 

 

Suddenly, explosions rang out around them, literally. Bombs had detonated on a higher level than the room they shared now, and rock and debris fell around them like a pernicious snowfall. 

 

They barely noticed. They were so wrapped in each other that nothing short of judgment day would’ve stopped them from re-exploring each other’s lips, tongue, teeth. 

 

They felt a mutual safety encompass them and they knew, any way, that nothing could harm them here. These boys would live in this love forever. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
